Jim Harbaugh at Super Bowl 50: He’s bigger and happier than ever, and the 49ers are smaller

SAN FRANCISCO–Jim Harbaugh invaded Super Bowl 50 Radio Row on Friday, conquered all he saw, and you better believe he’s sticking around for a while.

That includes Sunday’s little football game at Levi’s Stadium, which, of course, Harbaugh has not entered since he was fired by Jed York and Trent Baalke in December 2014.

He’s coming back, bigger and rowdier than ever.

The 49ers shrunk after he left; Harbaugh zipped off Michigan, his alma mater, and has only grown larger and more celebrated.

“Working on a couple tickets there,” Harbaugh told me on my “TK Show” podcast from Radio Row on Friday.

“My daughter Grace and wife Sarah and I are working on some tickets and planning on going.”

I think we can presume that Harbaugh has enough pull to land the tickets and that he will not mind if the camera finds him a time or two before, during and after Carolina vs. Denver.

He was a star among stars at the Media Center on Friday, racing through a series of national interviews and weaving past movie stars, Hall of Famers and all other celebrity folk at top speed.

Harbaugh mostly wanted to stay away from questions about the 49ers’ 2015 travails, but he eagerly addressed specific queries I had about Colin Kaepernick, the quarterback Harbaugh picked and developed.

With Harbaugh gone, Kaepernick staggered through a terrible season, accompanied by a series of derogatory leaks from 49ers management sources.

Jim, was it tough to see Kaepernick go through all that, especially when he got trashed by 49ers leaks the same way you were trashed in 2014?

“Yeah, that was disappointing,” Harbaugh said. “Because nobody fights for their team like Colin Kaepernick. Colin will flourish, there’s no question in my mind about that.

“He’s too great of a talent and he is a competitor at the very highest level–very similar to the quarterbacks you’re going to watch in the Super Bowl, in Cam Newton and Peyton Manning.

“Yeah, there’s ups and downs in football. That’s football, welcome to it. Welcome to the game of football. But Colin will flourish I have no doubt about that.”

Harbaugh confirmed that he has communicated with Kaepernick lately; my understanding is that Kaepernick has leaned on his old coach for support.

“We’ve talked–we’ve texted back and forth and talked to (his father) Rick Kaepernick a bunch of times,” Harbaugh said.

“That doesn’t end because you’re not on the same team. That’s a trusting, lasting friendship that’ll always be there.”

In general Harbaugh news: Yes, he loved his first season coaching Michigan; he has thrown himself into recruiting and in fact has made the whole thing a gargantuan spectacle right down to the extravagant signing day production earlier this week in Ann Arbor.

Once he left Stanford for the 49ers in 2011, I thought he might not quite embrace the college game ever again.

Well, that was wrong and the 10-3 Wolverine record is probably only the start of this.

In fact, Harbaugh told his players before their Citrus Bowl game that they were about to make this the best year of his football life.

“Really thought about it, analyzed it,” Harbaugh said. “The team effort that we had going on our football team…

“I told our team going into the bowl game, if we win the game, personally, for me personally, this will be the most fun
year that I’ve had in coaching or playing or in football.

“But we had to win that game. We’ve got to. And they did. Absolutely, it was the most fun I had in football.”

And right after signing day, Harbaugh got on a plane back to the Bay Area, and on Friday he buzzed around Super Bowl City like he owned the place.

What’s Harbaugh’s line about missing the NFL? It’s not going anywhere. Well, he’s not going anywhere, either, not really.

He still has a house here; he’s scheduled to play in the AT&T Pebble Beach National Pro-Am, just like he did at the height of his 49ers tenure.

He’ll almost certainly be at Levi’s on Sunday, and I asked him what that might be like.

“Could be some Memory Lane type of thoughts,” Harbaugh said. “I mean, the same kind of thoughts that I have when I see Frank Gore a week and a half ago, or Ricky Jean-Francois, ran into him today, watching Vernon (Davis) flying around the field or Colin Jones will be out there, Ted Ginn, Jr…

“You definitely have memories and they don’t go away. those were good times, signature years.”

Then he left, the 49ers dissipated, and here’s Harbaugh back here again, in case you forgot what the whole experience was like.